Whitelaw was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and raised at the family home, "Monklands", on Thurlow Road in Nairn.[6] He never met his father, William Alexander Whitelaw, born 1892, a member of a Scottish family of the landed gentry,[7][8] who died in 1919 after service in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the First World War, when his son was still a baby. Whitelaw was brought up by his mother, Helen, a daughter of Major-General Francis Russell of Aden,[8] MP for Cheltenham and a military attaché, and his paternal grandfather, William Whitelaw (1868–1946), of Gartshore, Dunbartonshire, an Old Harrovian who had been educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,[9] a landowner, briefly Conservative MP for Perth, 1892–1895, and chairman of the London and North-Eastern Railway Company.[10] One of his great-aunts by marriage, born Dorothy Sarah Disraeli, was the niece of former Prime Minister and author Benjamin Disraeli.[8][7]
The battalion's second-in-command was killed when his tank was hit in front of Whitelaw's eyes; Whitelaw succeeded to this position, holding it, with the rank of major, throughout the advance through the Netherlands into Germany and until the end of the war. He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions at Caumont; a photograph of Field-MarshalBernard Montgomery pinning the medal to his chest appears in his memoirs. After the end of the war in Europe, Whitelaw's unit was to have taken part in the invasion of Japan, but the Pacific War ended before this. Instead he was posted to Palestine, before leaving the army in 1946 to take care of the family estates of Gartshore and Woodhall in Lanarkshire, which he inherited on the death of his grandfather.
When the Conservatives returned to power in 1970 under Edward Heath, Whitelaw was made Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons, with a seat in the cabinet.[15] Upon the imposition of direct rule in March 1972, he became the first Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, serving in that capacity until November 1973. During his time in Northern Ireland he introduced Special Category Status for paramilitary prisoners. He attempted to negotiate with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, meeting its Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stiofáin in July 1972. The talks ended in an agreement to change from a seven-day truce to an open-ended truce; however, this did not last long. As a briefing for prime minister Heath later noted, Whitelaw "found the experience of meeting and talking to Mr Mac Stíofáin very unpleasant". Mac Stiofáin in his memoir complimented Whitelaw, saying he was the only Englishman ever to pronounce his name in Irish correctly.[16]
Soon after Harold Wilson's Labour Party returned to government, Heath appointed Whitelaw as deputy leader of the opposition and chairman of the Conservative Party. Following a second defeat in the October 1974 general election, during which Whitelaw had accused Wilson of going "round and round the country stirring up apathy", Heath was forced to call a leadership election in 1975. Whitelaw loyally refused to run against Heath; however, and to widespread surprise, Margaret Thatcher narrowly defeated Heath in the first round. Whitelaw stood in his place and lost convincingly against Thatcher in the second round. The vote polarised along right–left lines, with in addition the region, experience and education of the MP having their effects.[19]
Thatcher admired Whitelaw and appointed him Home Secretary in her first Cabinet, later writing of him "Willie is a big man in character as well as physically. He wanted the success of the Government which from the first he accepted would be guided by my general philosophy. Once he had pledged his loyalty, he never withdrew it".[21] Thatcher was rumoured to have said that "every Prime Minister needs a Willie" and Whitelaw was seen as Thatcher's de factoDeputy Prime Minister between 1979 and 1988 (though he never formally held the office), to the extent that the then Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, said that had Thatcher been killed in the Brighton hotel bombing, he thought he would have advised Queen Elizabeth II to send for Whitelaw.[22][23][24]
As home secretary, Whitelaw adopted a hard-line approach to law and order. He improved police pay and embarked upon a programme of extensive prison building. His four-year tenure in office, however, was generally perceived as a troubled one. His much vaunted "short, sharp shock" policy, whereby convicted young offenders were detained in secure units and subjected to quasi-military discipline, won approval from the public but proved expensive to implement.[citation needed] He was home secretary during the six-day Iranian Embassy siege in April–May 1980.
In March 1981, he approved Wolverhampton Metropolitan Borough Council's 14-day ban on political marches in the borough in response to a planned National Front demonstration there.[25]
Inner city decay, unemployment and what was perceived at the time as heavy-handed policing of ethnic minorities (notably the application of what some called the "notorious" sus law) sparked major riots in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds, and a spate of disturbances elsewhere. The Provisional IRA escalated its bombing campaign in England.
He contemplated resigning after an intruder broke into the Queen's bedroom in 1982 but was dissuaded from doing so. "We couldn't do without Willie," Margaret Thatcher reflected in later years. "He was a wonderful person."[26]
During his period as her deputy and as Leader of the Lords, Thatcher relied on Whitelaw heavily; she famously announced that "every prime minister needs a Willie".[28] He chaired the "star chamber" committee that settled the annual disputes between the limited resources made available by Treasury and the spending demands of other government departments. It was Whitelaw, in November 1980, who managed to dissuade Thatcher from going to Leeds to take charge of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation personally.[29]
Resignation
Following a stroke in December 1987, he felt he had no choice but to resign. Nicholas Ridley argued that Whitelaw's retirement marked the beginning of the end of the Thatcher premiership, as he was no longer around as often to give sensible advice and to moderate her stance on issues, or to maintain a consensus of support in her own Cabinet and parliamentary party.[citation needed] He resigned from the Cabinet on 10 January 1988.[30]
After several years of declining health, Whitelaw died from natural causes at Ennim, his home in Blencow, on 1 July 1999, shortly after his 81st birthday.[33][34] He had been married for 56 years to his wife, Celia, Viscountess Whitelaw, a philanthropist/charity worker and horticulturist who had been an ATS volunteer during the Second World War.[34] The couple had four daughters. Although Whitelaw was given a hereditary peerage, the title became extinct on his death as his daughters were unable to inherit. His eldest daughter Susan married Nicholas Cunliffe-Lister, 3rd Earl of Swinton. His home for many years was the mansion of Ennim, just outside the village of Great Blencow near Penrith, Cumbria. He was buried at St. Andrew's Parish Church, Dacre, Cumbria. Whitelaw was an active freemason.[35][36]
Coat of arms of William Whitelaw
Crest
A Bee erect proper
Escutcheon
Sable a Chevron engrailed Or between three Boars' Heads couped Argent armed and langued Or
Supporters
On either side a Charolais Bull in trian aspect proper each with a Garland about the shoulder of Roses Gules barbed and seeded slipped and leaved and Thistles stalked and leaved proper and interlaced in front with two Pairs of Golf Clubs fretted saltirewise Gold; the Compartment comprising three Mounts of Moorland proper growing from each of these to the fore two Roses and as many Thistles the Roses Gules barbed and seeded stalked and leaved proper and the Thistles stalked and leaved also proper
^ abA Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 1898, volume 2, ed. Bernard Burke, p. 1585, 'Whitelaw of Gartshore'.
^"COMPANIONS OF HONOUR". 16 June 2008. Archived from the original on 26 September 2008. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
^Philip Cowley and Matthew Bailey, "Peasants' Uprising or Religious War? Re-Examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest", British Journal of Political Science (2000) 30#4 pp. 599–629 in JSTOR
^Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands (2013), p. 427.
^Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (HarperCollins, 1993), p. 27.
^Norton, Philip (2017). "A temporary occupant of No.10? Prime Ministerial succession in the event of the death of the incumbent". Public Law: 26, 28.